For at least one day the Mets, those egregious laughingstocks, were anything but: they stomped on the Giants to break their losing streak in convincing fashion. 9-5? That’s definitely a way to make a living.

Yoenis Cespedes led the charge, smacking two home runs and just missing a third, a just-missed that may or may not have led […]

I’ve spent a good chunk of the winter sulking about Jeurys Familia quick-pitching or Yoenis Cespedes playing base-soccer or Daniel Murphy bringing the glove up or Cespedes charging off first on a soft liner or Terry Collins being too sentimental or Lucas Duda being unable to make a simple throw home or getting to the big stage […]

Those of you who’ve waited with bated breath for this annual feature (pause for crickets), my apologies — blame paid work competing for my time and the curdling of my attitude about the 2015 World Series from acceptance to anger, a psychological ambush I’ll delve into one of these days.

A week and a half ago I finished the manuscript for the third book in my Jupiter Pirates series, capping a fairly exhausting run of writing and travel that began last August. (Which is one reason, besides Wilpon-related apathy, that Greg — APPLAUSE!!! — has been a full-time presence at the helm this offseason.) While laboring, […]

Sad news out of Long Island: Sy Berger, the father of modern baseball cards, died today at 91.

Berger didn’t invent baseball cards — they date back to 19th-century “trade cards” and were first popularized by cigarette companies. But Berger made them the empire they became. In 1947 he started working as a marketer at Brooklyn-based Topps, […]

Background: I have a trio of binders, long ago dubbed The Holy Books (THB) by Greg, that contain a baseball card for every Met on the all-time roster. They’re in order of matriculation: Tom Seaver is Class of ’67, Mike Piazza is Class of ’98, […]

For that, I need the Mets to keep playing well against lousy competition and hold their own against mediocre foes, to say nothing of taking on the big boys of the NL. I need to watch a lineup that scares somebody other than me. I need a whole lot that this team shows no signs […]

Let’s not go overboard: This isn’t the greatest set. The photography’s good again, but Topps has developed an unfortunate predilection for novelty shots, with far too many players romping with teammates (and often on dreaded horizontal cards), getting doused with Gatorade or showing off Oscar […]

After last night’s thriller, today’s game was almost certain to be a letdown — but unfortunately it was worse than that. It was the inverse of last night, with the key plays going minutely but decisively the Giants’ way. Omar Quintanilla and Daniel Murphy were just a bit slow trying to turn the double play […]